


Gather Your Memories Against the Dark

by Dolorosa



Category: The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25147906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: Late at night in the winter darkness, Ammar, Jehane, and Rodrigo carve out a memory for themselves.This fic was written for the 2020 Sunshine Challenge, to the prompt of 'orange'.
Relationships: Rodrigo Belmonte/Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan, future Rodrigo Belmonte/Jehane bet Ishak/Ammar ibn Khairan/Miranda Belmonte
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Sunshine Challenge





	Gather Your Memories Against the Dark

As the hour grew late, and the two moons lay heavy in the clear winter sky, three figures lingered after the evening's feasting and festivities. The musicians and dancers had long since departed, and the room was empty, save for a handful of servants clearing away the last remaining cluster of glasses and drinking vessels. Presently, they too finished their work, and departed from the banquet hall, leaving the unlikely trio alone — two men and a woman, heads bent towards each other, eyes alive with intent curiosity.

'What did you make of the allusions in that last poem?' asked Rodrigo, offering the jug of wine to each of his interlocutors. Jehane held up a hand, forestalling him, but Ammar allowed his glass to be refilled.

'A little bit obvious,' Ammar said, 'although I suppose that depends on who was intended to be the _mirrored lion drinking from the streams that echo the Al-Fontina_.'

'And who the reflection?' said Rodrigo. 'Indeed.'

Jehane felt the same uneasy shifting that often rose unprompted when these two men conversed. They seemed, as always, to be having a conversation that danced between several contradictory layers of meaning, nothing clear or plainly spoken, steering a way through dangerous currents. Even the words of poets were, it seemed, a trap, a coiled threat to snare the unwary. The very air seemed to crackle, charged with unspoken promise.

The three of them sat very close — not quite near enough to touch, but near enough that the slightest motion would cause their arms to brush against each other's. Jehane wondered what would happen if one of them bridged that gap — reached out a hand, clumsy as if it were unintentional, letting their fingers fall together, entwined. She wondered who would be the first to do so.

*

Ammar slipped away, subtle as a shadow, and returned after several moments with a cloth-covered object clutched in his hands. He settled back down between the other two, unwrapping his parcel with a flourish to reveal an orange, bright and vivid in the flickering lamplight. Jehane stretched out a hand. The fruit was icy to the touch.

'Such miracles you work,' said Rodrigo, laughing. 'Oranges in the depths of winter!'

'King Badir's chefs keep a supply of them chilled in ice throughout the colder months, that he might impress guests at his table with fresh fruit all year round,' said Ammar in reply.

Rodrigo smiled at this, and produced a knife from where it had remained, uncollected, on the table after the evening meal. With two deft, fluid motions, he had sliced the orange into quarters. He distributed one wedge to Jehane, and one to Ammar, hands brushing against hands, the silence of the room broken only by the dancing water of the stream that ran through it. For a moment, no one seemed to move, each lost in their own world, the juice running down their fingers. And then Jehane reached across, deliberately, and pressed her piece of orange to Ammar's lips.

His eyes were wide with shock, but only for a moment. He ate Jehane's wedge of orange, contemplatively, as if he were asking himself a question. And then he took Rodrigo's hand, raised it to his own mouth, and kissed the knuckles, as light and swift as the wings of a butterfly, before directing Rodrigo's other hand — the one still holding the quarter of orange — to Jehane's waiting mouth.

If Rodrigo were surprised at any of this, he did not show it — indeed, he took the opportunity to steal Ammar's as-yet-uneaten share of the fruit, with a laughing comment about 'orange thieves,' and devoured it, before turning his attention back to the man and woman sitting beside him. Jehane, her free hand already tangled in Ammar's hair, found herself drawn even closer, her lips tracing a path across Rodrigo's brow, both men clinging to her, and to each other. It became impossible to tell whose mouth was kissing hers, or to identify which set of arms encircled her — and Jehane did not care to try. That first, daring moment — stretching across to Ammar with the orange quarter, her arm brushing against Rodrigo's body as she did so — had been a question, and she had had it answered.

'Who is the fourth, uneaten quarter for?' Ammar asked, after some time had passed.

'Isn't that obvious?' said Jehane, and her smile was a wondrous thing. 'It's for Miranda Belmonte, to eat with us, after.' She reached out a hand to trail in the stream which cut through the room behind her, and the water was like an icy rush of clarity.

The moons and stars whirled on in their sweeping arc above them, chased towards dawn by the indifferent sun.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is drawn from a quote from _The Lions of Al-Rassan_ , in which Miranda Belmonte thinks of Jehane, _She hasn't even had time to gather memories against the dark_.


End file.
